Pays au dela

"As to the natural parts I have, of which this is the essay, I find them to bow under the burden; my fancy and judgment do but grope in the dark, tripping and stumbling [wobbling] in the way, and when I have gone as far as I can, I am in no degree satisfied; I discover still a new and greater extent of land before me, with a troubled and imperfect sight and wrapped up in clouds, that I am not able to penetrate." Montaigne-"On the Education of Children"

My domain name, "Pais au dela," is the original French translated here as "extent of land before me." My goal for this page will be to explore, in an ambling way at times, the great land before me hoping to find clarity as I advance. I will focus centrally though not exclusively on mental health issues in my stumbling march forward.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

At the beginning of September 2010,
I was extremely happy and had great confidence in the satisfying future ahead
of me. I was living in a studio apartment in a nice residential neighborhood in
Paris with my attractive and talented French wife. We had married in June
at a lovely ceremony. Our best friends and closest family came from around the
world and showered us with pink and yellow rose petals on the church steps
above la Rue du commerce where you
can look out over the 15th district’s scene of unassuming shops and
bistros. For our reception, we cruised down the Seine on a river boat, eating
well, drinking Champagne, dancing well into the early morning. From the heights
of my emotional peak, I watched the Eiffel Tower sparkle off the water against my bride's once-in-a-life-time white dress and darkly Mexican tan shoulders.

My personal life was coalescing into
order, and I was also flying high in my professional life back then. I’d
written the first chapter of my dissertation (on Proust and friendship). My
advisers liked it, and I was progressing on schedule towards my PhD. A smooth
path into the tenure track and a happy nuclear family was opening in front of
me with no visible obstacles in sight.

By the middle of October, I was a
helpless suicidal wreck standing on a metro platform pondering whether I would
jump in front of the next train. Things fell apart at break neck pace. I
dropped like lead faster than I ever imagined possible into a bout with major
depression. After two hospitalizations, five adjustments in medication, six
therapists, six psychiatrists and countless hours of anguish for me, my
friends, and my family, I’ve emerged intact and breathing a year and a half
later. The nauseous funk has dissolved away, and once again, I am functioning
and even enjoying the things that lost their flavor when I was sick. The
pleasures of running, reading, cooking, and writing have returned.

Health professionals and other
writers often describe depression as a loss of identity. In the depths of the
illness, you are not yourself in an utterly terrible way. Things that once
mattered no longer do, and you stop caring about what motivated you when you
were healthy. You want to care. You dreadfully miss your motivation, but for
some reason, it is incredibly difficult to pop the emotional clutch and kick
start your active will once it sputters out with depression.

If you lose yourself when you are
depressed, it’s tempting to say that you recover when you learn how to be the
old you again. Recovery though is not necessarily a return to a previous
condition. Often undetected problems in your former identity caused or at least
contributed to the onset of illness. In many cases, recovery requires building
a new identity from rubble of the former self. I am no longer the same person I
was when I walked out of my wedding into the fluttering rose pedals. My
recovery has been a transformation, at times a rather painful transformation.
Our marriage did not survive the turmoil of mental breakdown, and it has hurt
and still does hurt to let go of such a huge and important part of me.

This past winter, I got involved
with the National
Alliance on Mental Illness and the
director of our local chapter suggested I train to become a Family to Family
instructor. I spent an intense emotional weekend in January learning about the
family dynamics of coping with mental illness. Our trainers Sue and Linda are
two truly spectacular women who have made remarkable long term commitments to
share what they’ve learned from caring for their struggling relatives. They
taught me how grief is a major phase of recovery from depression. Following a
breakdown, we and our families need to mourn the changes in our lives—the
lost time, the unrealized potential, the shattered projects, the wasted
opportunities. Listening to our wonderful trainers explain the grieving
process, I broke down into unabashed weeping. Sue and Linda and the Family to
Family materials had pierced me deep and opened a flood of pent up emotion. I
understood that day that the life my wife and I had built and the dreams we’d
planned together were gone.

But the experience wasn’t entirely
negative. The painful realization of my loss also brought a powerful feeling of
release. My tears were searing hot, but they were also rinsing out some of the
hurt from my divorce. When I
think of this loss in terms of mourning, my broken marriage doesn’t ache quite so badly.
I accept that our relationship is gone and not coming back, and acceptance
brings solace and peace even if it never completely wipes away the pain.

For many of us, our first depressive
episode is a fall from grace. Like the sin that drove Adam and Eve from the
garden, depression pushes us out of the happy state we once knew. And so as I
look back over what depression smashed, I recall the end of John Milton’s Paradise
Lost. Those closing lines
comfort me greatly because they are not just the end. They’re also a new
beginning for Adam and Eve and the beginning of humanity’s march towards
redemption. The story’s not over. Paradise will be regained. And so too with
mental illness, perhaps in repeating cycles of fall and redemption. A
simultaneous Alpha and Omega of depression, loss and fiery destruction of
yesterday’s bliss, hope looking ahead to tomorrow’s wide open world before us.

They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon;
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

There will be much more here soon. For now just a word on the title. I've used a passage from Montaigne's Essay 1.26 "De L'institution des enfans" for the title of the page and the domain name.

"As to the natural
parts I have, of which this is the essay, I find them to bow under the
burden; my fancy and judgment do but grope in the dark, tripping and
stumbling [wobbling] in the way, and when I have gone as far as I can, I am in no
degree satisfied; I discover still a new and greater extent of land before
me, with a troubled and imperfect sight and wrapped up in clouds, that I
am not able to penetrate."

"Pais au dela" is the French for "extent of land before me." My goal here will be to explore, in an ambling way at times, the great land before me hoping to find clarity as I advance. I will focus centrally though not exclusively on mental health issues in my stumbling march forward.

Stilt Walker

"It is an absolute, and divine-like, perfection to know how to loyally enjoy your being. We search out other conditions, while misunderstanding our own, and leave out from of our self, not knowing what it is made of. We climb so well onto stilts, but up on stilts we are still having to walk on our legs. And on the most lofty throne in the world we are still only sitting on our ass"--Montaigne 3.13